Curriculum – MA Program

Women’s and Gender Studies, MA

The interdisciplinary MA in Women’s and Gender Studies requires 36 semester hours and prepares graduates for professional employment and for further study. All students take the common core (9 credit hours) and capstone experience (6 credit hours) plus 21 or more additional hours. Course options may include a component of professional skills development to prepare students for immediate employment in non-faculty positions in education, non-profit organizations, government, or business. Students may also develop a plan of study leading to the pursuit of doctoral degrees in women’s and gender studies or other professional degrees for employment in such diverse areas as counseling, university teaching, the arts, and business.

Students should select a minimum of 9 credit hours of course work constituting a concentrated area of study that reflects their goals and interests. The proposed Plan of Study must be approved by the WGS Graduate Advisor (Director of Graduate Studies). These courses may be selected from those approved for WGS credit or appropriate courses in relevant fields. Students take 12 additional hours chosen from courses approved for WGS credit, or from other graduate offerings consistent with their plan of study. All substitutions for WGS credit must be approved in advance by the Director of Graduate Studies.

Representative Courses Approved for WGS Credit

Consult advisor for additional options. Students may not double-count courses taken to fulfill requirements.

There are two ways to find current course offerings in WGS (those with a WGS number or marker):

Find graduate-level courses and descriptions by clicking on “Course Descriptions” in the left-hand navigation bar under WGS Academic Programs. Click on “Graduate Courses” to find a Google document listing the WGS course offerings and their descriptions.

Find all WGS course offerings (undergrad and grad, no description) by going to UNCGenie Course Offerings Search: use the scroll-down menus to select the term; do not select subject (leave as “Not Applicable”); and scroll down to select WGS for course category. Click the “course search” button. The resulting list is alphabetical by subject, then numeric from lower- to higher-numbered courses. Graduate students may take 600- and 700-level courses as well as a limited number of 500-level courses.

Graduate course offering histories. To inform your enrollment choices, look through this searchable document which shows how often each course has been offered over the last five years, or to find WGS markered courses.